Instant Evolution!

Back for a minute, to an old and pretty tired theme of mine, I just have to expose this dastardly scheme I cooked up the other day while driving. Driving has to be good for something right? (I never did get into podcasts)

So, what if someday there comes along a really charismatic Jesus preacher, just like so many folks are hoping. And what if this Jesus preacher just gets everyone's ear over some mass-mediated kind of electromagnetic ether, and announces the rapture. We'll allow for asynchronous communications like podcasts here, so let's say he (you can't really imagine a woman doing this, can you. Oh, yeah, well there is Sarah Palin . . . ) announces a time when this will happen, and then tells everyone to get ready.

They can jump off a cliff if they like, or they can just let go of the wheel. It will be a giant test of faith. We have all these technologies cued up for it. (What? You thought automobiles had actual functional uses? If that were the case, they wouldn't be outfitted so much like living-room spaceships; mobile wombs with their view!)

So people would be put to the test. If their faith is real, then they will know that Jesus will be there for them, and the rest of us will be left behind. Well, there will be lots of Catholics left behind too, since they don't do that kind of faith, and their patriarchs would counsel common sense. There'd probably be a lot of crossing going on behind closed doors.

Sensible people would also be made aware of these announcements by the evil mainstream media. MSM would almost certainly have to get wind of the pending rapture since there are so many born-agains in the world that they can hardly keep it secret. I mean, I doubt there are enough encyryption keys to go around for that.

And so sensible people would definitely stay clear of the highways when the moment arrived, perhaps even locking their doors, and plugging their ears against the mayhem.

Hopefully, people wouldn't do a half-assed insurance policy kind of faith which is so popular now among Christians. The kind of have-your-cake-and-eat-it Christianity, where it's good to get rich so long as you get the right kind of entertainment on Sunday. That would create a God-awful mess of bloodshed beyond our best-on-the-planet (NOT) healthcare system's ability to clean it up. These people would have a tough decision between their paradise already set up on earth, and the promised one in heaven. They'd probably hedge their bets, I'll just bet.

No, you'd want a really charismatic preacher who would have people aim their cars at each other, turn off the airbags like they do for their kids, or maybe aim right off the cliff, although there can't possibly be enough cliffs either. Hmmmm.

Still, I think we have the technology to make this happen. Lots of God and Country loving people could just point their guns right in their loud mouths, and then bang, evolution would take one giant leap forward in an instant.

All the enraptured people wouldn't know the difference, and I'm pretty sure since I did die once (does that make me born-again?), that they will be in eternal bliss for the second between bang and brain dead. The narrative of one's life expands to perfect stasis -I know for an actual fact - with every detail there before you in nearly vivid color, and I'm sure Jesus would condescend for one last appearance too, to the minds of the faithful.

And the ones left behind would be, well, the evolved ones. Along with enough well-schooled theologians to explain to us that Jesus was only ever real in our hearts and minds. It was never the history which made the magic, although for sure tricking people into faith has a kind of logic to it. Until it backfires. Bam!

Oh, sure OK, I know what you're going to say. What about the technophiles, like that crazy Ray Kurzweil who thinks he's gonna get eternity just by thinking really hard. None of them will take this bait, and so they'll be peppered in among the sane people and the Catholics.

Well, they're smart. They can be a kind of worker-bee class, making widgets for the rest of us on the promise to them that when they achieve their immortality, they can have it!

And so the rest of us will not only be left behind, but we'll have cool widgets to keep us from the creepy crawlies of the earth, but, you know, removed so as to cause no harm. Back in our wombs with a view. Touching nothing that we can hurt. But feeling very much as if we were, virtually, alive!

And outside, life will start all over again without us. And we can watch it on TV, across the generations, eternally, and buzzed.

Hey, you never know! It's a lot nicer than the scenarios I hear from rich folks about how "we're all fucked". And they're in a perfect position to do something about it. It's just an idea is all. The kind you can throw out there for nothing, that's you know, worth about nothing.